Saving lives
by TheTravelBug
Summary: "Remember this story, remember that we all wouldn't be here if it were not for the uncountable amounts of times that we have saved each other. It is the story of all our lives, it is the reason we are here and it is our history." - Rather long one-shot ;D


_**A/N:** Okay...JennaBennet will kill me for not uploading this any sooner...I think I promised to do it about 4 weeks ago...but being on holidays and basically never online or on my computer for that matter, I didn't finish the story until today. The idea comes from JennaBennet, I just wrote it down the way I pictured it. I don't know how well you will get on with all the characters in it so there is a little explanation of everyone at the end of the story to make it a little clearer. Some of you will notice that another fandom has found it's way into this story, I just couldn't resist ;D I really hope you like it. Oh, also, I am not the type to stereotype people, the names I gave are solely for the purpose of story-telling, not to categorize or discriminate or anything =) (You'll see what I mean when you read it...)_

_Now all that remains to be said is: Enjoy!_

* * *

"Please, gramps! Tell us a story, please!" the little boy begged and tugged on his grandfather's arm so he would join the family by the fire.

"Yes please, granddad!" the boys older sister chimed in and he finally gave in.

"What story would you like to hear then?" he asked, looking into the faces of all his seven grandchildren

"Tell them the story of how mom saved your butt time and time again."

He turned around to see Johanna standing in the door, glass in one hand, towel to dry it in the other and he heard her mother's laugh from behind her in the kitchen.

"Oh, you mean the story of how _I_ saved _your mom's_ butt time and time again, you mean? Yeah, I can do that," he countered.

"Oh, don't you dare!" his wife called out but the children were already too interested. They waited until everyone could join them though because even though his children had heard the story time and time before already, they always enjoyed listening to their father even after years. Alexis could probably have told the whole thing as well and she knew she would have the pleasure of telling it to her nieces and nephews whenever they would visit her.

He waited till his wife was settled down next to him on the comfy couch before he started to recount the endless stories of how they saved each other's lives.

"You know I'm going to interrupt you as soon as you go over the top with your colouring, you know that, right?" Kate whispered into his ear and he chuckled. It was always the same, every time he told this story she said the same thing because the first time he'd told it, when the kids had only been a few years old, just old enough to understand the essence of it all, he'd over exaggerated immensely and he'd sounded like the superhero of the present day and even after almost thirty-five years of marriage it was still the same and she needed to tell him again and again.

"Come on now, dad," Leo urged, "you're making the kids giddy..."

"You can't rush genius, dear son, but all right."

He cleared his throat and looked each of his children, their spouses and his grandchildren deeply into their eyes.

"Listen carefully now, because this is the story of all of your lives, mine included…

A long time ago and a long way away –" he felt an elbow punch his side "– okay, a not such long way away, there was a pretty girl working for the police. She had a hard job because she worked homicide and it really wasn't a place for a woman to be –" another punch to the side "– she had two knights working for her…"

"Richard, will you stop it now?! Just tell the story, not a fairy tale…"

"Oh, just let him tell it this way, mom, we can always recount the real thing another time without dad…" Rose calmed her mother and her father chuckled again and continued as if there had been no interruption.

"However, the maiden and her knights had trouble solving a crime one day and so she had to go the white knight in shining armour and ask him for his help. She found him in the fall of a storm and asked him to assist her. Well…she first thought he had something to do with it but he knew the king and so managed to get to work with her."

"Gramps…really though, Noel and the twins might think the fairy tale version is the best but please can you change it a tiny bit at least?"

He sighed. "No taste for storytelling, none of you lot…anyways, where was I? Oh right. The man, formerly known as the white knight started to work with the chick and the bros, they cruised the streets and freed them of filthy murderers. And sometimes there was some dangerous work involved where the chick had to be saved. The first time this happened was when the dragon – don't tell your mother, Alexis! – turned up and helped to find out what the killer was after. He was looking for a passport in a fake bag and the chick and her bodyguard entered the flat of the girl who owned that bag and they were surprised by the murderer and the ladies bodyguard just about managed to pull her down to the floor and find cover behind the kitchen counter in time. And he managed to distract the dirt-bag by popping a champagne bottle so it sounded like gunfire."

"You do realise that I saved your life already before that, right?"

"We've been over this, that doesn't count."

"Oh, yes it does, Mr Castle, yes it does!"

"What was it, granny?" asked Noel, the little four year old who had begged his grandfather to tell a story.

"Well, you remember how the white knight came to work with the Detective?"

The little boy nodded, as did all the children.

"Well, while we were going to the suspect's apartment, I cuffed your grandfather to the car so he wouldn't get in the way, because that's what he liked to do, getting in the way. I really wasn't very keen on working with him and cuffing him seemed like a good idea. He, however, managed to free himself and saw Harrison" – "Who was our suspect" interrupted Castle just to annoy his wife, - "escaping from the fire escape and stupidly decided to follow him. I ran after them only to find him at Harrison's gun point. I stayed with them, pointing my own gun at Harrison but Castle started talking and the whole situation got more and more critical…"

"…until I managed to knock him out and take his gun from him which is why this doesn't count as a save because Kate didn't do anything."

"I'm on grandpa's side with this one…"

"Of course you are, Jeremy," Kate replied but was unimpressed by this. Alexi's children saw her as their real grandmother because Meredith was still never around but when it came down to it, both children always sided with their grandfather. Rick was Jeremy's big idol and being the oldest grandson in the family, he got to spend a lot of time with him and Lucy had inherited his writing talent and was about to have her first novel published. Unlike her grandfather, she wrote adventure books for young adults though. Rick was immensely proud of her and so were all the others.

"Anyway. Where was I? Oh right, by the time you saved my life for the first time, I had already saved yours once. We were totally even then."

"So, can I continue now?"

"Only if you tell them the times I saved you as well."

"If you insist… Right, on we go, back to my story," he said and continued.

"Kate did count that as a safe, that incident with the African guy. You know, we were once called "The Officer and the Gentleman". I think I'm going to continue like that. Okay, so, the Officer had another moment of wanting to save the Gentleman's life. It was quite a similar situation to the first. He had to wait in the car and unlike so many other times, he listened to the Officer and stayed put. Oh, the fun he had, fooling around in that car…but trouble usually found him, not the other way around so when the suspect landed on the hood of the car, the Gentleman had no other choice but to fight, and fight he did. Being a gentleman and not an officer though, he got beaten up a little and he probably would've been shot had the Officer not stepped in fast enough and prevented the suspect to take his gun. You know, that's where I got one of the most famous Nikki Heat lines from, "Go ahead, I need the practise", that is a classic, so was that saving. Seriously, it was awesome, the Gentleman was totally in a good mood for the rest of the day but the Officer wasn't, not really. She got annoyed by the Gentleman rather quickly."

"Gramps?" little Gemma interrupted.

"Yes, love?"

"Did granny hate you?" she asked and everybody smiled. Gemma was the youngest of the family, only just three years old but she noticed more things than her four year old cousin did.

"No honey, she loved me even before she first met me, she just hated to admit it."

"Not true, I did hate you a little. I loved your books but I hated you."

"Nah, you were just annoyed by me and my irresistible charm. You just pretended to hate me because loving me would've been a lot more exhausting."

"Still is, my love, still is," his wife replied with a teasing smile, then nuzzled lovingly into his side and encouraged him to continue with the story.

"No interruptions anymore now, okay? Good. There soon came a time where the Officer and the Gentleman didn't get on with each other very well. He had done something he promised her not to do and she was furious with him. But he didn't back off and instead managed to get to work with the team on another case. She was furious about that too. But in the end, the Gentleman was vital in solving the case but he also got into life threatening danger. He was undercover, playing poker with some serious Russian guys and he got into trouble because he was talking too much and this one guy put a gun to his back and made him walk to the kitchen and then there she was, the Officer, all of a sudden coming in there too, pretending to be the Gentleman's Russian girlfriend, all dressed up and looking totally not like a cop and she distracted the Russian and then disarmed him. The Gentleman was quite flustered and counted it as a save. The Gentleman apologised for his behaviour then, he told the Officer he was sorry for digging his nose into business that wasn't his own and then they were good again. For some while, their cases were no threat to either of their lives, not really at least but when they got to work on a case where the Westies were involved, it was almost clear from the beginning that it was going to be trouble. And it was. It was the biggest trouble they had been in in quite a while because the victim got stabbed and your Aunty Lanie found out that he had been murdered by the same weapon that had injured the Officer's mother to death. The Officer and the Gentleman were not chasing after any murderer anymore, they were chasing after the killer who had made the Officer join the force in the first place. But the killer played a mean game. He lured the Officer into thinking he had been a victim himself and made a deal that would set him free and it was too late to back out of this deal when the Officer realised who the suspect really was. She didn't want to let him go but he got hold of a weapon and threatened to kill the Gentleman if she didn't back off and together they walked through the precinct and no one really realised what was going on except for the Captain and he made his way around them and wanted to help by pointing his gun at Coonan who didn't let go of the Gentleman and the Officer wanted Coonan alive so she could finally solve her mother's case but she couldn't watch the Gentleman being threatened and he just wanted to break free and then he had a totally bright idea. He smashed his head back and broke the idiot's nose but Coonan raised his gun to shoot and the Officer had no other choice but to draw her gun and shoot before he did. Coonan died in the precinct even though she tried to keep him alive. There was nothing anyone could do. But she had saved the Gentleman's life once again and it was a 4:1 for her.

Soon after, the Gentleman had the chance to bring the score back to a more even place. There was a very bad man on the loose, one who thought that Nikki Heat actually existed and he really believed that the Officer was Nikki Heat. He hurt a lot of people to get her attention and there was this really great FBI agent who came to work with the Officer and the Gentleman. Boy, she really was great" – this earned him another punch to the side and a cushion thrown at him from Rose, but he ignored it and continued – "and she assisted the NYPD. They soon had a suspect and managed to secure him, well…he was no more when they found him but still, they thought the threat was over and everyone went home calm and relieved. But there was something that bugged the Gentleman and when his mother asked him to give him a hand he realised the mistake they had made. The guy they'd found that day, the one they all thought was the bad man, he was right handed but the actual killer was left handed and he got up as quickly as he could and was on his way to warn the Officer because she was in grave danger but she didn't pick up her phone. Only when he was almost at her apartment did she pick up and all he could tell her was that the real killer was still out there and then her apartment exploded. He was so scared that he'd lost her so he went up to the apartment, knocked down the door – oh, that was so awesome – and then the Gentleman found her in the bath tub, alive and n-" he got another punch from his wife there.

"You do realise there are kids listening, right?"

"You didn't mind me telling this story when Rose was 4years old," he replied, rubbing his now almost sore side but Beckett only glared at him. She had a lot of grey hair already, she didn't dye it. It was also still long and curly so apart from the slightly different colour and the wrinkles she got over time, the way she glared at him still looked the same as ever and also, out of habit or real fear, Castle backed slightly away and raised his hands in defence as he always did.

"All right, all right, Mrs Castle has spoken." He often called her Mrs Castle even though she'd kept her own name. Marrying a famous man was already enough to get the attention of the press, taking on his name would've left her with no space at all and Detective Beckett, or Captain Beckett as it had been for the past few years before she retired, sounded a lot better than Detective Castle or Captain Castle. It had been an argument between the two of them though. Castle had always known that his wife would eventually become a Captain and he'd always thought Captain Castle would sound totally cool but Kate had strictly refused and he'd known her well enough not to argue any longer.

She relaxed again and let him continue the story.

"Well, like I said, the Gentleman found the Officer well and alive in the bath tub. She was a little battered and her apartment was in flames, her stuff in ashes but she was fine and it was the first time that she had to spend the night at the Gentleman's apartment and she cooked him the most wonderful breakfast the next day. I wonder why she doesn't do that anymore…"

"Oi, watch it or you'll never get _any_ breakfast again!"

He giggled and went on.

"The explosion was not the last thing. The case was still open and FBI Agent Jordan Shaw got kidnapped and together with the NYPD, the FBI went to free her. The Gentleman had one of his mastermind ideas, where he theorised that Agent Shaw was certainly not going to be in the building everyone thought so he and the Officer went to the opposite building and found Agent Shaw and Scott Dunn exactly there. In a fight between the Officer and Dunn, the Officer got thrown on the floor and Dunn held her at gunpoint. The Gentleman had been looking for the two of them, it had not been easy because they were in a building with far too many corners and such but he came just in time, aimed for Dunn's head."

Little Gemma had crawled up on her mother's lap because she was slowly getting scared of the story but it was also getting hard to really cuddle up on Rose's lap because she was pregnant again. So instead she dropped off her lap again and found council in her father's arms who grinned at his girl and gave Rick an encouraging look to continue because everyone who had never heard the story before was eager to hear what was coming next.

"He fired. And Dunn dropped his weapon because the bullet intended for his head had hit his hand instead, but it saved the Officer nonetheless. After this incident, the Gentleman had a score of 3 and the Officer still one of four."

"Gamps?" one of the twins interrupted, "How many times did you save each other's lives?"

"Oh, quite a lot, Sammy, quite a lot. I'm not yet done with the story. Why, are you getting sleepy?"

"NO!" the boy shouted, he was just very impatient and also a little scared because his grandparents had been in so many dangerous situations and his favourite uncle – well, he only had the one – was a cop too and he didn't want anything to happen to him but he still wanted to hear the story.

"Okay Castle, enough of this, it's my turn again, you're scaring the kids."

"Hey, who didn't want me to tell the story as a fairy tale?!"

"Oh, shush now, my turn, basta. We didn't have the best of summers after our second year of working together. I'd gotten used to him hanging around and then he asked me to come here with me, to the Hamptons and spend the summer here. I was very much inclined to say yes but then there was this other cop, Demming. He was a nice guy, handsome and all and we started going out and Demming asked me to go on a weekend trip the day Rick left for the Hamptons and I didn't know what to do. After a talk with Espo I realised that Demming wasn't what or rather who I wanted so we ended whatever we had before it had really begun and then there was the small party we threw for Rick because he said that he needed time to finish his latest Nikki Heat book and I was determined to tell him I'd go with him to the Hamptons. I had built up all my courage to tell him and then Gina showed up at the precinct and he trolled off with her. Oh, I was so mad at him."

"You know, Kate and I had a lot of arguments over this little fact once she told me. After we finally got together I asked her to come to the Hamptons again and then she told me this. I always say we could've been together two years earlier but she always says it wouldn't have worked out…"

"It wouldn't have. I wasn't ready and neither were you. Now let me get to the point.

I was once again furious at him and even though he'd promised that we would see each other in the fall, I never heard from him. I found out he was back while working on a case, where we found him over a dead woman's body. He wasn't the killer, although I would've been more than happy to lock him up for a while. Being such good friends with the Mayor and Montgomery he managed to lure his way into the team again. We made a deal then. I was willing to take him back but under one condition only, he had to figure out the motive of murder before me and he did. Well, we figured it out at the same time but I let it count. Once we got to our suspects, we interrogated one there and then and Rick saw a shadow, turned around and saw the suspect's husband who was in on the scam and he reacted really quickly and tackled me to the floor so that the bullet from the husband's gun missed and we were back on an even score of 4:4. Because he tackled me though, our suspects ran off and we had to chase them and ended up in the back alley, Rick pointing a gun at me, or so it seemed –"

"And she pointed a gun at me for that matter, I really thought she was going to shoot me for being back on the team"

" – but we weren't really pointing our guns at each other. We shot at the same time because each of us had a suspect behind us who was about to shoot so there you go, another time we saved each other's lives, we have a score of 5:5 now."

"Now that I think of it, we really did have a lot to do with saving each other's lives over the years… How come we always survived?"

"We were lucky, like we always are." She smiled at him while saying it and gave him a kiss which made the twins say "ugh" and turn away from their grandparents but they just laughed.

"You're too old!" Luke moaned and made his parents laugh as well.

"One day, you'll be as old as us and then you'll think differently," Kate told the boy but he just shook his head.

"Never."

"Never say never ever."

"Yes, gramps, can you continue now? Please?"

"Fine. We found our rhythm again after a while, trusted each other more and more and we just knew that we had each other's back. It really was a great time of working together. Then a killer came back that none of us ever wanted to hear from again. He was called 3XK for certain reasons that I'm not going to mention here. Anyway, back to telling the real story. The Gentleman saw the similarities first and he was right, it was 3XK and it was one of the heavier cases the Gentleman had ever worked on. He felt personally threatened by the guy and wanted to do anything to get him behind bars again. He just never expected the twist in the whole story because the moment they thought they had the guy, full confession and all, and the Gentleman and the Irish boy" – "That's uncle Kev,!" little Noel cheered, – "went to let the witness go, the Gentleman realised there was something wrong. The witness had not once asked how his girlfriend was and that made him realise that the witness was actually the real 3XK. 3XK was too fast though and the Gentleman and the Irish got overwhelmed, the Gentleman tied to a chair. AT that moment, the Gentleman's phone rang and 3XK thought it'd be fun to listen to the Gentleman saying his final words. It was the Gentleman's mother and he told her he loved her, nothing suspicious for 3XK but his mother immediately knew there was something wrong. She called the Officer who had already thought something was wrong too because the Irish and the Gentleman had not returned yet and that was very weird and when the Gentleman's mother called she was on her way to the motel in no time with back up, of course. 3XK was already gone, though, but she found both the Gentleman and the Irish safe and relatively unharmed. Basically it's not a lifesaving moment because the Gentleman had talked his way out of getting shot but the effort counts, so the score stands on 6:5 for the Officer."

"Gramps, do you really count that as a safe? I mean, grandma would've been too late…right?" One of the twins asked.

"Well…we've been over this time and time again, your grandmother and I but like I said, in this case it's the effort that counts because I wouldn't have had enough courage to keep talking not knowing she was on her way."

The little boy nodded in response, his face serious as he was thinking hard to grasp the meaning of his grandfather's words. Rick, however, continued with the story.

"Now, do you remember the incident with Coonan? Yeah? Well, that was nothing compared to what came next. There was this Detective, the one who worked the Officer's mother's case back in the days and he was dying so he wanted to tell the Officer a few things he'd never mentioned before but before he could say anything, he got shot. A new investigation was opened and well, the Gentleman and the Officer got kicked off the case because she banged a suspect's head into the one way glass of the interrogation room and the Gentleman would have played Nancy Drew and no one wanted that. Well, he wouldn't have but the Captain thought he would so he kicked him out too. During a talk with the Officer, he managed to team up with her again, they were officially partners from that moment on, and they worked on the case even though they had been kicked out. The Irish and the Latino kept them informed and they found a solid lead they had to check up on. They knew a woman called Jolene had bought anxiety pills and must have known the killer because they found the exact same pills in the place from where the killer had shot so they went to see her. There were two Jolene's though and so the Officer and the Gentleman went to the other one. They found her dead and while calling the Irish and the Latino, they heard a sound in the background and realised that the Irish and the Latino had just been knocked out. They needed to find them, quickly, because who knew that the bad man had in mind with them. Once they'd found the abandoned building where they thought the boys were held, the Gentleman came up with a very non-gentleman-like idea but they were desperate so the Officer agreed. They went out of their car, pretending to be a couple. The guard somehow didn't believe it though and before the Officer could draw her weapon and warn the guy in the building, the Gentleman grabbed her and kissed her fiercely. That, my dear grandchildren, was the Gentleman's and the Officer's very first kiss and it was awesome."

"Rick…"

"What? It was!"

"It was undercover, had nothing to do with us."

"Mhm, yeah, right. Believe what you want, I know it was our first kiss. Now if you'd let me continue please.  
The two of them went into the building and surprised the douchebags who were holding the Irish and the Latino. There was a lot of shooting going on and the Gentleman, unarmed as he was, had to duck and hide. While doing that, he saw the sniper aiming a shot at his Officer and he couldn't let anything happen to her so he tiptoed closer and then, slightly before the sniper could shoot, jumped on him so the shot went somewhere upwards and not towards the Officer. The Gentleman then punched the sniper a few times just to be on the save side."

"Did you really do that, grandpa?" Sophie wanted to know. "I mean, wasn't that really dangerous?"

"Well, yeah…it was dangerous but you know, it was totally worth it and necessary too."

"Hmm…But you could've been hurt instead…"

"Lucky I wasn't then."

"Gramps!"

"What?"

The girl didn't say anything more, instead she got up from the floor in front of him and sat on his lap, hugging him.

"I'm glad you weren't hurt."

"Me too, sweetheart, me too. But you know, that's not the last story and by far not the most dangerous. Shall I go on?"

The children all nodded and even Alexi's children, who were considerably older and had heard the story before, were still fascinated by it.

"The next one is probably one of the more scary stories, one that only few will ever hear of because only few knew what was really going on at the time. A terrible threat was looming over New York City. The Gentleman and the Officer had gotten into a murder investigation of a potential criminal and all leads were leading them towards a bomb. It wasn't like the victim had any dealings in criminal activities before that but somehow everything pointed towards it. They'd been following up a lead and found a storage unit and in there they found…nothing. Well, there was a crate but it was pretty much empty. Or not threatening. At least not very… But then some kind of device went off and the Officer realised they were exposed to high levels of radiation. Both of them were put into quarantine – together. Luckily everything was fine but after finding out about the bomb, they got help from Homeland Security because the whole situation was rather tricky and threatening. But you can about guess that Agent Fallon didn't get on with the team all too well… Fallon believed the victim really was in on the whole nuclear bomb thing but well, as it was, the Officer and the Gentleman had different theories. They didn't believe the victim was a terrorist. He'd just become a father, so why would blow the city up? There were lots of inconclusive things and the Officer and the Gentleman agreed on that. They weren't allowed to investigate deeper though. Since the Gentleman wasn't a cop though, he had a plan. He met up with a guy of whom he thought might be able to help him but Agent Fallon found out about it and threw both the Detective and the Gentleman off the case.

Now…you all know what the Gentleman and the Officer are like so I'm sure it won't surprise you to hear that they carried on their investigation anyways. And it won't surprise you either that they actually found a solid lead and went to a warehouse where they found a van and inside of it the bomb with a countdown on it. But that's when the gunfire started. Bang! One shot after the other was fired and once again, the Officer had to save the Gentleman's life. Well, to be honest, I still don't know if it really was a save because what the Officer did was making the Gentleman hide inside a freezer and she closed the door after them so they were basically trapped inside of it. But then again, had she not done that, they'd have gotten shot right there and then, so the freezer was the lifesaving option at the time. What happened in the freezer won't be counted as a lifesaving moment for either one. They kept each other warm by holding each other and talking to each other but the reason they were both still alive was actually their team, the Irish and the Latino. Unfortunately though, the threat that loomed over New York was still out there but now they knew how much time there was left. The Officer and the Gentleman were brought back into the team again since they'd been the ones who found the bomb and also because they would've just continued investigating on their own. Agent Fallon wasn't at all happy about the whole arrangement but there was nothing he could do. The Officer and Fallon didn't get on with each other at all. She thought he was a twat, too rough and with no empathy at all but together they managed to find the real terrorists, another Taxi driver who wanted everyone to think the war has to continue because there are still bad people out there. The bomb, however, was not where they thought it was. It was already on its way to the centre of New York with the victim's wife as a driver. She was being threatened, or rather the bad boys threatened to harm her child if she didn't drive. Luckily the Officer and the Gentleman could stop her and open the van only to see that they had just a couple of minutes left to disarm the bomb. They called Fallon, who wasn't there with them, but he couldn't help them and in a desperate moment, the Gentleman just pulled out all the cables on a whim. And to everyone's astonishment it worked. The bomb didn't blow up and the city was saved. The Gentleman knew very well that it was sheer luck but it counted as a safe anyways and we've got a score of 7:7 now. It wasn't that long after this happened that the old case of the Officer's mother's case surfaced again. The guy who shot the cop in our previous story managed to get out of prison; he escaped during his trial and was on the loose again. Knowing this, it was clear that everyone involved in the case was in danger, most of all the Officer. The case turned out to be more complicated than anyone thought. The team had to find the third cop who was also involved in the whole thing and get Lockwood back into prison. I will not go into too much detail but the Gentleman got into a very, very bad fight with the Officer after she'd been kicked out of the precinct again. She ended up getting called to a hangar where Montgomery was waiting for her to sacrifice himself but he'd known that she would not go willingly so he called the Gentleman who then dragged her out of that hangar just before Lockwood and his men came to get her. It was a huge loss to everyone when the Captain passed away that night but he took Lockwood with him and everyone thought it was over. We're on a score of 7:8 for the Gentleman now but there's more to the story. It was the day of the funeral for Captain Montgomery. The team was devastated because they had not only lost their Captain, the Officer had also lost her mentor and Montgomery had been something like a father figure to everyone. The Officer held an amazing speech that was very touching. She and the Gentleman had made up again and she was saying that sometimes one is lucky enough to find someone who will stand with you and that's exactly what the Gentleman did. He looked at her, smiling, but at that moment he saw a reflection in the far and wasn't quite sure what to make out of it. And then there was that terrible sound of a bullet ripping through the air. You knew everyone was drawing their breath and holding it in the split second before the bullet hit the Officer and the Gentleman tackled her to the ground.

He was a little too late, the bullet had already hit her and the Gentleman was terrified of losing her. So much so that he did the one thing he didn't have the courage to do before."

"He kissed her!" little Sophia almost screamed and made her grandmother chuckle.

"No love, he didn't kiss me. He did something much more courageous. He told me for the first time that he loved me." Kate turned her head slightly from watching Sophie to looking into Rick's eyes who returned her gaze.

"And I've never stopped loving you since," he commented in a low, tender voice and kissed her again.

"Gran? Did it hurt? Getting shot, I mean…" Luke asked and Kate nodded.

"Yes. It hurt terribly but I lost consciousness very quickly. All I could hear was Rick's "I love you, Kate" before I drifted off. I couldn't deal with it, his confession, I pretended not to remember and it made our next year a living hell every now and then. I survived. Barely survived but I think had Rick not said those words I might not have had the strength to survive…"

"So it's…9:7 now and the Officer has only just barely managed to get through the latest threat to her life. After not contacting the Gentleman for months she went back to work to find he'd been kicked out of the precinct by the new Captain – a very fierce woman who could only have been outshone by Kate herself. The Officer heard the story of how the Gentleman had helped her team to find any leads on her shooting and she knew she had to go see him. It wasn't easy to get him back but she did manage in the end and they started to work together again. It really wasn't very easy for the Gentleman to work with her again, having told her he loved her and her not remembering it. He was always rather scared that something might happen to her but he couldn't tell her why he was so very afraid for her because he knew she wasn't ready. He tried to help her in any way possible, had her back all the time but there were times where he was glad that she had his back as well, especially on that very particular day in a bank."

"Let me tell this story," Kate interrupted her husband with a gentle squeeze of his hand and he nodded.

"It was a boring day in the precinct. I had only paperwork to do and Rick tended to disappear whenever paper was piling up. He was at the bank with his mother but was terribly bored so he called me. I told him to come help me with said paperwork but instead he started spinning a story of bank robbers coming into the bank because he thought there were some suspicious people hanging around. I honestly thought it was his writers imagination that made him see something like ghosts when I heard someone shout to not move and realised that Rick had been right, there was a bank robbery going on. I was immediately on high alert and dispatch was called. To say that this was one of the worst days in my life would almost be an understatement and that includes all the times that I've almost lost my own life. The boys and I went to the bank to see what we could do, after all, Rick was part of our team and we wanted him safe. The thing was, before we called dispatch, Rick had been discovered on the phone so one of the robbers was talking to me and for some reason he wanted only to talk to me again which – to my luck – got me on the dispatch team. I had to negotiate, not something I was used to. It went against my whole training in the force but I managed. I had to manage, there was absolutely no way I was going to let that bastard shoot my partner, the man I loved. Not that I'd told him yet… Like I said, those were the toughest hours I've ever gone through, everything I did was in the knowledge that if I blew it up, he might die. Somehow I managed to negotiate though, I got in as a paramedic when one of the hostages got sick, I managed to reassure Rick that I'd get him out. The boys figured out why the bank robbers were there in the first place, or rather, what they'd been after – pictures in a safe deposit box that belonged to a lady who they found dead. It slowly began to come together and the negotiation had gone so far that the robbers were giving us more time than they'd first wanted to give us. I will leave the part out where I threatened the leader of the whole troop. And then, while I was on the phone, there was this huge bang, the van I was sitting in shook, as did the ground below our feet and I knew what had happened. Rick had told me about the C4 in the bank and I knew there and then that the robbers had blown the bank up. I was terrified. I never expected to find anyone alive, least of all Rick. When the dust cloud had more or less evaporated and we had the okay that the building was safe to enter, we stormed in there and I called out for Rick. He answered. The relief that surged through me is something I will never forget. It was like the biggest stone fell from my heart and I could finally, finally breathe again. The bank robbers had put all the hostages behind the bars of a safe and blown a hole in the floor to escape. They didn't survive the explosion. But I had my partner back and all I wanted was to spend more time with him. Solve the case and then just spend time with him. We did solve the case, found the master mind behind the whole plan, rescued the people he intended to hurt and then spent a lovely evening at the loft with Martha and Alexis. I think that was our first proper family dinner even though we weren't a family yet."

When she finished it was quiet in the room. The only sound to be heard was the crackling of the fire. The stories of how they had saved each other's lives were all in a way interesting and maybe a bit scary every now and then, but this was always the one story that silenced everyone. When people heard of her getting shot at Montgomery's funeral, people went silent too but it was always a very different kind of silence then. It was more a "Oh, I am so terribly sorry" kind of silence whereas the silence that followed this story was a "Oh my dear soul, what you did to save him is amazing and heart-breaking and wonderful and completely unimaginable and the best thing I've ever heard" kind of silence. It wasn't easy to continue the count of saving lives after this one but the children knew there was more to come so they waited for one of their grandparents to start speaking again.

Castle sighed. "Riiiiight…Tiger. That's the next one!"

"Tiger?" Noel asked, "real tiger?"

Castle nodded and the little boy looked at his grandfather, his mouth wide open for not believing him.

"It's still a debate between Uncle Javi, Uncle Kev, Kate and myself. We agree that we saved each other but in the end it was the boys who got us out of our very precarious situation…We got…well…kidnapped you could say. And thrown in a cellar handcuffed together. Up to this day I am quite certain those kidnappers just wanted us to finally get together…" Kate managed to hit him with her elbow once more and he grinned at her. They'd been married for so long now and sometimes it still felt like she loved him despite everything she ever wanted for herself. Not that she knew what she wanted, except for him but it made him smile nonetheless. She'd always tried to deny her love for him up until one very special night but she couldn't quite get rid of the whole resistance thing.

"Anyways. The Gentleman and the Officer woke up on a mattress in the dark, realising they were handcuffed together with no way out. There was a freezer in that room though. It's almost like a theme, freezers…but this one was just a small one and the Officer and the Gentleman tried to move it so they could get to the hatch in the ceiling but the freezer was far too heavy and it was locked. Luckily the Gentleman was able to pick the lock but what they found inside the freezer wasn't at all to their liking. It was full with chains and knives and stuff. Sitting in that stupid room handcuffed together gave the Officer and the Gentleman some insight into their future life though. I think it was quite a thing to see… but as you can guess, there was no one to see it. Anyways, at some point, the two heard voices from the other side of a wall. They'd tried to get out of the hatch after they'd managed to move the freezer but they got caught so they were still stuck. After hearing the voices thought they thought they knew why they were locked up in the first place. Human trafficking. They got too close to solving the case and now they were locked up and oh, the Gentleman got all excited, wondering how much he'd be worth… The Officer however thought there must be a little girl in the other room and convinced the Gentleman to break through the wall… well… bad idea. Very bad idea… They did manage to break through but what they found wasn't at all a girl. It was a freaking tiger! Oh, you won't believe how scared we were. So much so that the Officer hid behind the Gentleman when he told her to and she never ever listened to him… But this was different. Very different. They then had the idea of moving the freezer again to cover up the hole in the wall because the tiger had not yet managed to get through but they were too slow and the hole was getting bigger and bigger so what they did in the end is turn the freezer upside down and climbed on top of it. Basically that's the life-saving moment for both of them because they kept each other alive by coming up with ideas but the hatch was opened by the Irish and the Latino and they got saved by the two of them in the end. But we still count it as a life-saving event. We're now on a count of 9:10 for the Gentleman. The next time the two of them had to be saved was when they found themselves stuck in a car, slowly sinking down to the bottom of the Hudson River. The Officer was stuck, her security belt was stuck but the Gentleman managed to free himself and he found the gun he needed to fire and loosen the windows. He shot the windows at the same time as the Officer managed to finally free herself and together they knocked the window out of the car and swam to the surface with the last breath they had… 9:11 for the Gentleman."

"The next story is again for me to tell and it is the last one. It's not like we haven't saved each other time and time again after this one but things changed after this one and I want you to remember this story and even if you forget all the others, don't forget this. Once you're all grown up and have children of your own and we are not here anymore, tell this story to your children so they will always remember their history of where they come from.

It was once again a case that connected to my mothers. Someone broke into Captain Montgomery's home and was looking for something. Rick almost immediately knew what the guy must have been looking for, or he suspected it at least. But there was no connection to that old case at the beginning. We started to investigate the case of the murdered burglar but as soon as the connection to my mother's case came out, Rick tried to stop me from investigating. It ended in the biggest fight we've ever had and you must know that we didn't have the best time before that. Rick had found out that I knew that he loved me, that I always remembered. He didn't say anything so I didn't know but it made him act like an idiot. During that fight, he told me he knew. And he told me again that he loved me but I didn't care because he was interfering with my life and I couldn't have that. And it seemed like he and I were never going to talk to each other again. At the precinct, we didn't inform our Captain about the connection because she would've kicked me off the case so we acted alone, Uncle Javi and I. We found Maddox, the guy who shot me in the cemetery and I chased him to the roof. We fought and I was a really good fighter at the time but he was stronger than me and I had almost no chance. He threw me over the edge of the building and I could only just hold on to the roof but I was hanging in the air with no help in sight. While I was hanging there, there was only one thing I could think about. I didn't care about my mother's case, I didn't care if I ever solved it, if I ever got justice for it. All I cared about was living through the day so I could tell the man I loved how much I cared about him. He was the only thought in my mind and the more my grip loosened from the roof, the more determined I was to hang on. I even heard him calling out for me, knew he was coming to rescue me once more, to save my life another time. I was desperate to see him but the person who managed to catch me before I fell wasn't Rick. Uncle Kev had informed Captain Gates and followed us with back up. He was the one who'd been calling out for me, Rick was nowhere in sight. He didn't save my life, he didn't save me from falling down but I held on long enough for someone else to do it because he was in my thoughts. And for the first time in years I realised that no matter if I was ready or not, I had to tell him. I couldn't let him believe I didn't care enough for him, I couldn't lose him. He kept me alive even when he wasn't physically around at that was all that mattered. I quit my job that day. Captain Gates wanted to suspend me but I didn't care about my job anymore. I only cared for Rick and I only wanted to be with him. My future in the force didn't matter anymore so I left. I had a long walk to think everything through and I ended up knocking at his door and I told him that all I wanted was him and that I needed him more than anything in the world. He's been my rock ever since, he's saved my life again after I got back in the force and I've saved his but we didn't keep a score anymore because it didn't matter. We didn't safe each other's lives because we wanted the other one to live, we saved each other's lives because we couldn't live without the other. It was as simple as that and saving the other's life therefore meant saving our own as well so it would have been a score for both of us anyways." Kate then paused, looking into her husband's eyes, still full of life and mischief and love for her, looked into her children's and grandchildren's eyes and she was so glad that she had them all.

"Remember this story, remember that we all wouldn't be here if it were not for the uncountable amounts of times that Rick and I saved each other. It is the story of all our lives, it is the reason we are here and it is our history. I am the most grateful person in the world and I love you all."

Rick gave her a squeeze and a loving smile and Sophia crawled from her grandfather's lap into Kate's lap and hugged her tight. Even the youngest ones understood the meaning behind the stories and it had made them both happy and sad hearing it.

The family slowly started different conversations but the stories were still on everyone's mind. The little ones, Noel and Gemma started playing and Johanna and Rose soon realised that their children were re-enacting the stories by playing them. Both Rick and Kate watched their family, their children and their offspring and having this big happy family made them even happier than they already were. They knew they'd tell their story again and they knew it would have the same effect every time. It was, after all, the story of the Castle's.

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**Characters:**

Kate (of course) - she's about 67 in the story

Rick - he's whatever age he is when Kate is 67...

Their kids:

Alexis (52), divorced (I'm sorry...I can't make all happy-happy family...and her kids are old enough...xD)  
Lucy (22), Jeremy (18)

Johanna (32), married to Alex with four kids (of course named after Kate's mum)  
Sophie (9), Luke and Sam (7), Noel (4)

Leo (31), about to get married to Kellie (named after Leo Tolstoy)

Rose (29), married to John with one kid and one on the way (named after Rose Tyler...Doctor Who is after all SiFi and Castle loves SiFi...so I thought why not...xDDD)  
Gemma (3)

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_Right...that was it...I hope you liked it =) If you want to you could brighten up my dull and rainy day in England by giving me a review ;D Ahahahahaha, sorry xD_


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